In the late 1980s, we brought African American Congressman Rev William Gray III to speak at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where I worked. At the time, he was Majority Whip of the House of Representatives and chairman of the Budget Committee.
Representative Gray discussed the federal budget, presenting it as a moral issue and a statement of values. In that spirit, let’s examine the recently enacted federal budget, introduced by the Republican-led Congress and President Trump.
We will note some of the significant things funded and the major stuff cut, a statement of what programs are valued and what are not valued by Republican Congresspersons. The budget bill includes hundreds of provisions, extending and expanding tax cuts and cutting Medicaid, food benefits, and other programs.
Tax Cuts
The budget bill makes permanent the 2017 Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, which were due to expire at the end of this year. More than a third of the total cuts went to households with an income of $460,000 or more. The current measure will raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $5 trillion, contradicting the Republican concern about the debt.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the tax cuts — mainly for the wealthy—will increase the deficit by approximately $3.4 trillion over the next decade.
This radical Republican budget bill is immoral. It steals from the poor to give tax cuts to the rich, as the Economic Policy Institute explains it. The bill is an upward redistribution of income. It includes severe spending cuts—primarily to healthcare and food assistance for children and families—to provide massive tax cuts to the wealthiest households. Because these cuts to health care and food assistance are so broad and deep, and because the tax cuts for anybody who is not already rich are so paltry, the bill will cause the bottom 40 percent of households to lose income on average. Meanwhile, households in the top 0.1 percent (those earning over $3.3 million per year) will gain more than $100,000 annually under this bill.
Health Care Cuts
Republicans have finally achieved a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This budget bill effectively serves as a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act to help offset the cost of tax cuts. It would represent the biggest rollback in federal support for health coverage ever.
A preliminary estimate from the Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would reduce federal spending for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s provisions by more than $1 trillion over a decade, resulting in nearly 12 million more people becoming uninsured by 2034.
An additional roughly one million people are expected to lose coverage as a result of recent Trump administration regulations that make it more difficult to enroll in coverage through the Affordable Care Act. One consulting firm estimates that enrollment in marketplace plans will ultimately drop by about half.
In total, the policy bill and these other changes could result in a staggering 17 million more people being uninsured. According to one estimate, the potential increase in the number of people uninsured, resulting from both Republican actions and inaction, would erase nearly three-quarters of the gains in coverage achieved under the Affordable Care Act.
By expanding Medicaid, guaranteeing access to insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, and providing tax credits to make insurance more affordable, the Affordable Care Act brought the country closer to universal health coverage than ever before. Twenty-five million Americans, roughly 8 percent of the population, were uninsured in 2023, the lowest level ever recorded and nearly half the number who were uninsured in 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was passed.
Food Benefits
Today, over 47 million Americans live in food-insecure households. Yet, this legislation will make it more difficult for people to qualify for food benefits and reduce those benefits for those who are eligible. Millions will lose their benefits altogether, and many more will receive less than they do now. The bill will require the biggest cut to SNAP since the food stamp program began in 1939, during the Great Depression.
This Republican budget bill fails the morality test!
